


first (and last)

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fights, Forgiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 14:23:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6242821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daisy and Coulson have a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	first (and last)

It’s much worse when she finally lowers her voice.

Much worse when she stop talking altogether.

He touches her wrist, sprained after today’s events, blissfully the only consequence of the mission going south.

“Don’t do that,” she says, clicking her tongue.

Of course not. How foolish of him.

“Sorry.”

He lets her hand go and looks ahead. They are sitting on the bench of the bathroom. Coulson feels small there, helpless. It has all quietened down too quickly.

“You can’t do that, you know,” Daisy says, voice softer still, but resolved. It’s worse, way worse than when she was shouting - and it’s a miracle no one heard them in the hallway and put two and two together. “You can’t override my orders like that.”

“Technically I-”

“Phil.” It’s more effective than shouting. It’s worse than when she called him _Director_ out there.

He looks down at her hand again.

“Was I supposed to let you die?” he asks, quiet himself. 

“You don’t know that’s what would have happened,” she argues. “And yes, you’re supposed to let me die. If that’s the call I make.”

“I’ve never…” he trails off.

He wishes it was easy to explain.

It’s his biggest fear too.

Not favoritism, the opposite. That he second-guesses himself because he loves her. That he puts her in danger because he thinks not putting her in danger is a violation of the trust between them. That he ends up regretting the relationship or regretting the job because he’s paralyzed like this.

It would be easier to ask for forgiveness than to explain all that. He wishes Daisy would let him - that he could bow down and kiss the sore parts of her wrist, that he could peel away the last layer of her SHIELD uniform until they are alone with each other, no orders and no fear of making a mistake, like they are each night in her bunk, that he could crawl between her legs and on the cold tiled floor and make it all right again.

The truth is: he has rules for himself he wouldn’t impose on others. Because he knew he’d be no good at this.

“I’m no good at this,” he tells her.

Daisy snorts. He misses when she was shaking from anger.

“And I’m spectacular,” she says.

He wishes he could touch her.

A child’s wish. Like everything could be put back together if only they went back to the place they inhabited before the storm. Coulson thinks in metaphors now, that’s how bad it’s gotten for him. 

He wants to say: you’re alive, that’s enough.

But it’s not enough.

He wants her to be alive and loved, and he’s the only one in the room with her.

And that - for Daisy - is not enough, ironically. 

“You can’t pull rank,” Daisy repeats. “Not when we’re -” she gestures between the two of them. “ _This_.”

“ _I know_ that,” he says, replying with some bite for the first time since they came back.

Nobody knows they are _this_. It would be easy to kill it now. Forget it ever happened. Go back to a time where he could have made the same decision and Daisy would have shouted at him anyway but it wouldn’t hurt like this.

“Do you want to stop?” he asks, looking at the tips of her fingers. She’s not shaking, she’s horribly calm about this.

“No,” she says, sounding as fiercely resolved as when she told him she should have shoved his orders… well, no, Daisy didn’t say that. She’s a professional. It just sounded like that to him.

He feels the contained energy within her - mixing with the usual skin-deep anger of hers, the one Coulson knows better now that he has seen her at unguarded moments, after nightmares, exhausted at the end of the day, when she’s been scrapped raw. It's there even as she sleeps, her body humming with the injustice of her history.

“I don’t care if we have to fight like this,” she says. “If you mess up and I have to chew your head off. Or if I mess up,” she adds. “I don’t care, I’m not giving you up.”

She says it with all the stubbornness of gritted teeth and fingers tired from clenching into fists, the history behind all that. For Daisy, who is used to having everything taken from her, saying these words is meaningful. Coulson is glad - he knows he’s spineless, he knows he would have let himself go with the flow. If she had said she wanted to end it Coulson wouldn’t have argued with her. Despite his heart.

He wraps his hand around her injured wrist again.

Daisy concedes.

He has never known many fights between himself and his lovers. They don’t usually get deep enough for that. Daisy has always fought him - always about real, big, important things. Not about lies or suspicions or something petty. 

“Our first fight,” Daisy suddenly says, her voice gradually changing into the familiar humor, the familiar awe at everything good that’s happened to her.

How is this good? Coulson wants to ask.

It’s good because she didn’t let go.

It suddenly occurs to him that it is just as easy for Daisy to let go of things she loves as it is for him, that they are so similar it almost hurts. So similar _this_ is probably not a good idea. So similar it doesn’t matter if it isn’t.

“I guess it is.”

She grabs his hand, flexing her own fingers carefully, still hurting.

“That means we are properly a…” she hesitates. “A _this_ now. Right?”

“I don’t know,” he admits.

He’s not a passionate man. 

She throws her head back. “I hate fights.”

“Me too.”

“Let’s never do this again,” she offers.

“Agreed.”

Daisy smiles at him. It has felt like ages since the last time. (It wasn’t, it was hours ago, in the mission, right before she headed out with way too little back-up.)

She stand up.

“I’m starved, let’s go eat something,” she tells him, offering her hand.

Coulson takes it.

“Something sweet?” he asks.

“Something ice cream,” Daisy decides.

Coulson knows he’s spineless and he’ll go with the flow - but this time, as it guides him out of the bathroom and towards ice cream, it’s not a bad thing.


End file.
